A trip into the heart of St Pancras chambers. Was this huge hotel/office part of a ‘network ahead of its time?’ (an idea explored in the book The Victorian Internet - and very amusing satirised here). Only later did the powers that be come up with the idea that control could be ‘done centrally and only the tweaking delegated’. There’s an interesting aside in this Guardian piece on homophobia in former British colonies – how it could be seen to be a legacy of colonial rule. ‘Indeed, it is clear the British had an off-the-peg penal code, since in Malaysia the same law [forbidding "sexual acts against the order of nature”] is also called Section 377, [as in Jamaica]’